So I thought I would get in a game of Malifaux....but Mage Wars got in the way.....

   So I was all set to pick up another good game of Malifaux.  It was going to be a 50 stone Jack Daw vs Misaki  against my friend Steve.  I wanted to see how he played with a master I knew nothing about.  I have never played against her, and I was in the same position that Matt was in against Jack Daw; I never even read her cards.  I do know from listening to various pod casts that she is a melee heavy master and so I was looking forward to trying a master like Jack against her, especially with hoo well he went against Lady J.

Dueling game from Arcane Wonders

   But I also told Matt that I wanted to try out Mage Wars.  It is moving through our local gaming store pretty quickly and a lot of times if you don't get into a new game, it will come and go before you get a change to try it.  I have missed my shot at Mice and Mystics because I was involved with something else.  So I wanted in.

Lots of bit in the game plus Spell Books

   Now lets talk about what kind of game it is.  It is a card game, and a board game, and you could almost call it a miniature game, but it comes with no minis.  I could definitely see them releasing an expansion with minis to use instead of the cards on the board.  I have heard that many other people say, "Man, if you just replaced the cards with minis you would have a much better looking game".  So we will see what happens in the future.  In this game you are playing a mage of one type of another, and you have a certain number of life points.  You eventual goal is to reduce the opposing mage to 0 hit points.  You do this by attacking the mage instead of the creatures and objects that they have summoned.  The rule book is online for free download, so if you want a much more in depth explanation of how to play, just down load it here. 

So what is the gist of playing this game.  In the base game you can play a Beastmaster, Priestess, Warlock, or Wizard.  Matt had a couple of the expansions so he has the added choices of Forcemaster, Warlord, Druid, or Necromancer.  I realize that a lot of you readers don't know me yet, but as soon as I heard Necromancer, I knew what I was playing and Matt chose Priestess and we were ready.  In this game each mage gets a spellbook and there is a basic spellbook laid out for each mage as part of the basic setup of the game.  So Matt passed out the spellbooks that we needed and then gave us the all the action counters that we need.  The action counters are an interesting way to show "tapped" cards for each player as they are small wooden cylinders with a starburst on one end, and a blank on the other.  You just flip the counter over once you have acted, and flip it back on the refresh stage.  Once the board is laid out, the mage is chosen, and the spellbook has been given you are ready to play.  So while the unboxing takes a while, the actual setup is not to long at all.
   Now you take your mage cards, there are 2, out of your spellbook and put
them down on the board.  The first one is the picture of your mage and the second is a lit of his/her stats and special abilities.  The board is divided into 12 squares and you start in the lower right corner.  The turn is then divided into 7 stages.  Initiative, Reset, Channeling, Upkeep, Planning, Deployment, and Actions.  Initiative is just passing the initiative token back and forth.  We found it can be difficult to remember for sure if you passed the token, so when you do play make sure to THINK about this step.  The reset phase is just what it sounds like, every object on the board has the token flipped so the sunburst is on the top.  Channeling adds your channeling score to your mana pool.  The two mages we played started at 10, and you can cast spells to summon objects or creatures to increase that number.  Upkeep phase is when you pay your upkeep costs on any creatures or objects you have summoned.
   Then you come to the Planning phase.  Now this is where you are going to spend most of the time in your game.  This is when you go through your spellbook and find up to two spells for your mage to cast, and if you have any spawnpoints, and creatures that it will cast.  I think i had about 40 spells in my "starter" spellbook, so going through and looking at all those spells to figure what to cast can be a bit time consuming.  Especially when you have to consider what your opponent could be casting, or what he has already cast.  After that you hit the Deployment phase.  This is when you take a spell you want your spellpoint to cast, and cast it.  You can take any mana that the spawnpoint contains and use that, but the remaining mana comes from your mana pool.
   FINALLY, we get to actions where you get to do something.  And what you get to do is a lot actually.  You get a couple little choices about in what order you want to do things.  Your mage can cast a quick action.  Now we haven't talked about the two different kinds of actions, a quick action and a full action.  Each card and/or ability has either a lightning bolt, quick action, or an hourglass, full action.  So your mage can pick any lightning bolt spell and cast it or you can wait and pass your quick action until another time.  You can then use a full action on any creature or your mage, and this is where it can be a little weird. If you are choosing to use your mage, you can cast any full action spell or do a move and a quick action, or if you are using a creature you summoned that has an action, you may move a square if you choose and then use a quick action or if the creature has a full action, then use that.  Most "attacks" are quick actions.  The move always comes before the swing, so no stab and run away.  After that, if you chose to delay your mage's quick action, you can do it then.
   So now lets talk for a second about attacking.  How it works is you look at the attack value on the card.  There will usually be a lightning bolt, a sword (melee) or a bow (range), a number in a red box that is your attack dice, and for some cards an effect number like 8+ to show a special ability if you roll higher then that number on a 12 sided die, finally there can be a trait which is an extra ability that is always active.  When you attack you just roll the number of red dice shown in the box on the card and also the 12 sided if you also have an effect like rot or taint and then take your trait into account if necessary.  There are a number of effects and traits that you can have and each is shown on the specific card that needs to show the effect.  It sounds a lot more cumbersome then it really is and after a few turns you will just be grabbing the dice you need and rolling when you need.
   After you have gone through ALL your creatures and mage, you go back to step one and start all over again.   You start with 10 mana in your pool and you start turn 1just like any other turn, so you add your channeling to your starting pool and get a starting mana pool of 20.  You can do the first five steps at the same time and it can save you a bit of time since the planning step is the longest, but especially the first few times, it is a LONG game.

   For my first game we clocked in 3.5 hours, but I feel it could have been shorter, and it is a good game that I would play again, and look forward to trying a few other mages, like the Warlord and the Beastmaster.  I enjoyed playing the Necromancer, although after reading a few different strategy guides I should have selected either skeletons OR zombies, and I played a mix.  By being more specific with what you summon you can more easily focus your plan.  That being said, I did win in the end, after almost giving up in the middle due to what felt like an unbeatable creature showing up out of Matt's spellbook.  She was a flying angel and I had nothing that could even hit he besides a single skeleton archer I had out.  Once Matt talked me down from the ledge I went on to cast a couple of acid balls, and got another archer out, so with some great die rolling I got that angel out of the game.
   Now to talk about the parts of the game I didn't like.  Honestly there was VERY little of this that I didn't like and i believe that about 80 percent was just how the starter spell book was created.  I felt like it should really be an all comers type of deck, and it just didn't feel like it was. The other problem was the cells on the board filling up. Near the end of the game Matt and I together had about 10-12 cards in a single cell and of course it wouldn't hold it all, so it just kinda ended up being a .....well they are all in this cell, even though they were in 2 cells and off the board.....but that is a very small complaint.

Dreamblade, another Mage dueling game

Now here is the part that is the biggest surprise for me.  I just to play a game that was VERY similar to this game and it was one of my favorite games I have played, so much so that I even break it out on occasion and still play.  It is called Dreamblade and is from Wizards of the Coast.  The difference is that you play with miniatures and a warband is 16 models.  You pick a range of models for the cost and deploy them to spawn points, or where you have other creatures and you score depending on the cell you are in rather then attacking the controller.  But if you have ever played dreamblade, and if you want a GREAT demo with a turn that you can play to learn the game just visit
here, click "Learn to Play" and play a round, you will know exactly what I mean.  With the move and attack actions you can take in Mage Wars it feels a lot like dreamblade.  You have a smaller pool to choose from, but it is the same mechanics.  Trust me, go and try the demo of dreamblade and see if you like it.  Then if you are ever in Toledo at The Game Room, stop in and I will have two warbands ready to go.  Then again if you want to play Mage Wars, you will have to bring the game along because while I enjoyed the game, and I would play it again, I will not be adding it to my collection.  Enough other people in the group have copies and I am sure I can get a game in whenever I want.

   Let me know if you have played Dreamblade or Mage Wars and tell me what you think.  Thanx for reading.  Talk to you again soon.

Time for a battle report...Jack Daw was....interesting....

   So let chat for a bit about how it felt to both fight with Jack Daw, and fight against him.  I got to play against my friend Matt on Thursday night after he got done playing the Star Trek game against Dave.  The Star Trek game looked interesting, but I hate vehicle games where I have turn tracks, so I doubt I would ever play, unless I was needed for a pickup game.  I have played a few games of Wings of Wonder for that reason.  While I was waiting I forced a couple of friends to play a quick game of Disc World.  I lost due to an excellent trick from Dan that had all of us leaving enough trouble markers on the board for him to win.  Good plan Dan!  I have asked Matt to write up his feelings about playing against Jack, and I will write up the battle report and how it felt fighting with him.

   First of all, we were only able to make it to turn 4, so we did not get to the end of the game and after chatting, he thought it would have been a draw and I thought he would have won.  So I guess as you work your way through the battle report you can decide yourself.
  As was reported in the last blog entries, I was playing Jack Daw, so for Matt it was not a huge surprise when I declared Outcast as my faction, and I was equally unsurprised when Matt called for Guild.  We had already decided on 50 stones for the game as we wanted to play a standard game with the crews we would have normally picked (that matter more to the story later).  We flipped for deployment, and Matt won, and than had me deploy first.  As happens many times in the games I have played lately, we flipped for flank deployment, so we got to making the Ls on our corners. I choosing left and he, of course, choose opposite.  I had a two pronged attack with a group at the far right of the bottom of the L, and a second group where the point of the L was.  Matt set up high on the top section of the L, and high on the bottom.   Next I flipped for the strategy, and got a crow, so read out the "Reckoning" entry.  Boiled down we each needed to kill 2 models per turn after the 1st turn.  This is the one strategy that enforces the "kill models" type of objective and to kill two a turn, but not more or less can be a challenge. For the scheme pool we had:  Line in the Sand, Protect Territory, Bodyguard, Outflank,  and Spring the Trap.  I took Bodyguard and Outflank as my schemes, and in the end I found out Matt took the same.
   After all that we finely get to crew selection.  I was playing Jack Daw, Lady Ligeia (totem), Montresor, The Guilty 1, The Guilty 2, The Hanged, Nurse and Hans.  Matt was playing Lady Justice, The Judge, Witchling Stalker 1, Witchling Stalker 2, Francisco, Guard 1, Guard 2, and Guard 3.  While there were upgrades on a number of characters, only the curses on Jack Daw made a real difference.  So now we are finally all set up to talk about how the game went.

The Board at the end of Turn 1

Turn 1
I won initiative and we moved all our models.  Lady J, The Judge, and a witchling stalker all moved up the left side of the board, with Montresor and The Hanged moved against them.  Matt moved Fransisco, a witchling stalker, and all three guards down the right hand side of the map.  Jack Daw and Lady Legeia moved to the middle, and the Nurse with the 2 Guilty moved across the bottom.  Finally Hans just moved down the board to get an angle.

Turn 2

Everyone continued their moves into turn 2.  The Hanged was close enough to move up with his first action, and then attacked Lady J with the second action.  He failed the attack was done.  Montresor used his nimble to move up and then attacked Lady J twice to no effect, including one attack with a Black Joker flip.  On the other side of the board, Matt's group stayed in place and I moved the Guilty and Nurse toward the building, and Lady and Jack moved up the back.  No attacks by that group at all.

Turn 3
   The Hanged attacked The Judge and hits for his half damage attack, and The Judge cannot heal for the rest of the game.  Lady charges and kills The Hanged with 2 attacks plus an Onslaught.  On the other side I attack with Jack Daw doing a point of damage and getting my first curse onto Matt's Guard minion.  Now the curse I played on him was the Guillotine curse that means as soon as a minion or peon model activates you have to spend two cards or the model dies.  Then to "flip" the curse he has to discard a card and spend 2 action points for the penance.  Matt's witchling stalker in the corner dropped a marker showing that he had outflank.
  
   Now if you have been paying attention, you can see that this is the first point of the game. We know technically we both have three points as no henchman or enforcer was killed, but as of now it is still 1 to 0 Matt.

Turn 4
   I won initiative and attacked Lady J with Montresor and gave her a single point of damage.  Lady J then returned the favor, but kill Montresor in a single turn.  Lady J still had time to move up and get closer to Hans, although behind the tree and so out of LOS.  Hans then went a killed the front guardsman in two AP, and then Lady Ligeia attacked the guardsman and ended up getting a severe damage result, killing the guardsman and doing 2 to all other models in the group with the blast.  Jack got back his curse from the guardsman that Lady L killed.  Now this means that with two kills i got a point for Reckoning.  This means that at the end of four, it was 1 to 1.  Now that ended the game, and so I will tell you why Matt felt a tie, and I felt he would have taken it.  As it was going into 5 he still had his bodyguard alive and I did not.  Now Matt thought that with the two pincers I had around the house and his group, I could have taken Fransisco out removing those points from his board, and with that group gone he wouldn't be able to get the other point for outflank, so it would have been a 1 to 1 draw.  I don't think I could have taken the whole group, and so didn't think I could get rid of Fransisco.  To me it would have been a 4 to 1 or if I could have gotten someone to the corner a 4 to 2 loss for me.  If it had gone to 6 turns, which is always a possibility, then i think it would have been more likely, but by then he could have gotten Lady J over there, so you never know.  Always hard to just guess how it would go if you didn't get to play it out.

Chad's Thoughts
Now this is the heart of Matt's complaint about the Jack Daw curse mechanic.  He brought the witchling stalkers because he could use them to clear conditions that the curses created.  The only problem with that plan was that the curses do not cause conditions, they add a characteristic and an ability.  This caused Matt to discard 3 cards from his hand and use a minions full activation just to clear the curse.  Now I do agree with Matt that this is a powerful ability, but it only affects minions, and causes no damage if it is cleared.  It is an all or nothing power.  Now Matt cleared the curse, flipped it over, the first time I used it, costing him 3 cards and 2 actions.  It only cost me a single action to give him the curse, and although that action was an attack and caused a point of damage, it was one of Jack's AP.  Now Matt could have let the minion die and kept the resources in his hand, so to ME, this doesn't feel any more powerful then any other master who can kill a minion (on average) in a single turn, like Lady J.  I will say though to start it did feel like it was very easy to get off, as it is a trigger that auto-completes.  The other two possible curses will work on any model even including a leader, but those two only "fire" after a tactical or attack action, and so only cost you 2 AP and a single card.  If you let the other 2 effect the model it also only causes 2 points of damage, not an auto kill usually with a secondary effect. Take a look at the curses as this is a very interesting mechanic.

Matt's Thoughts
   I had not looked into any of the wave two models . So going in blind I had the feeling that I was going to get demolished. I remember from Malifaux first edition that Jack Daw was super tough as were his lackeys the hanged. So going in I knew that I would have a tough battle. As the game started and Chad started using his abilities, specifically the cusrses, I knew I was in trouble. With some misunderstanding on my part on how the curses worked I did not believe that I had a chance. I had the understanding (wrongly mind you) that there was no way to get rid of the curses. They are tough and expensive to get rid of (two actions and one card).
    As the game progressed I started to think that the curse was powerful maybe to powerful, but he is a master. I started to take back my stance a bit as the game was getting closer to conclusion. All Masters are great at something and Jack Daw is good at getting you to lose your cards. I would like to play another game to conclusion to get a second opinion of Jack Daw. I am sure Chad would be willing to do that. After 2/3 of a game against Jack Daw, I would say a solid master.

Final Words
   I will say that I will definitely be playing Jack Daw again as both his crew and the mechanics of his play are both fun and interesting.  One of these things Matt also said was that part of the problem was the surprise of playing against Jack without first reading all of what he could do.  As stated earlier Matt would have changed a choice or two during his build if he had known what Jack could do.  He also said that he would not play against Jack at all, if more than one member of his crew could take the curses.  I think we will need to play a few more games before we know if it was really a negative play experience or just that he never say him play before.
   I hope you enjoyed this write up, I have never written a battle report before, so I would love to know if I need more or less detail, or what if anything is missing.  Thanx for reading!!

So Jack Daw....isn't he hanging around somewhere??

My Jack Daw only primed

  So with the start of the wave 2 we got our first new outcast master, Jack Daw.  Jack is the master seen on the hanging tree, which is the big tree in the center of the square in Malifaux City.  In the first edition, he was just a character in the outcast faction that could take hanged models from the resurrectionist  faction.  He was almost impossible to kill due to his special rules, and the back of his card read like an encyclopedia entry.  The text was packed on there even in a smaller font to cover every special rule.  The other interesting thing about Jack was that he was a mercenary, so he could be hired out of faction for 10 stones, instead of just working with the outcasts.  Another special rule allowed you to hire the Hanged for their standard cost as well.  If there was one thing that adding Jack to your crew did, it was add special rules.
   Now before I start this new paragraph, I just want to point out that this is my opinion.  I enjoyed playing version 1.5, but it was hard to be really casual about playing, or the crew you played with.  In version 2.0 I feel like I can play a number of different crews as each model has fewer options, while still keeping their individual flavor.  This is one of the biggest points of contention between 1.5 and 2.0.  When you look at his card, it is a perfect example of being to complex to play.  In Jack Daw's 1.5 card, there are 19 individual entries from attacks to special rules to abilities, some of which just control what happens when certain card are played.  It means you constantly had to be checking his card, or knowing what was important every time he attacked, or was attacked.
   Now in 2.0 the biggest change for Jack is that he is a master.  The second biggest change is that he now has 8 entries on his card, 2 (0) actions, 2 attacks, and 4 abilities.  This means just starting out you have 11 less things to learn, and combine with his crew.  With his upgrade cards adding a bit of trouble you can include a few new attacks and an added ability.  Jack Daw's new upgrade ability is to attack cursed upgrades to other models, and then make them pay action points to flip the upgrade back over.  Most of the "curses" mean giving damage when the model tries to do an action or walk.  It makes it very difficult to attack, walk, anything as long as this upgrade is attached and face up.
   I have had very little time to play during the wave 2 beta.  Because of this I have set up a game to play on Thursday with Jack Daw.  This is my first crew list that I will be trying out.  A couple of outcast, and a few other tormented models.

•  Jack Daw - cache 4 - Firing Squad, Guillotine Injustice, Writhing Torment
• Montrerer - 9 - The Creeping Terror
• Lady Ligeia - 4
• The Guilty - 5
• The Guilty - 5
• The Hanged - 9
• Nurse - 5
• Hans - 8

   So lets see if I can explain this mess.  I am using the first three to stop the other side from reaching their goals, The Guilty and the Hanged as objective grabbers, with the nurse backing them up, and Hans for board control, both stopping the opposing crew, and getting markers down when needed.  With what Jack can do I don't think that I will have any issues shutting the crew down, as long as I can get close enough to get those curses on them.

My proxy for Hans, just because I don't own him

   Now this crew choice does bring up another interesting point.  There are no models for about 2/3 of my crew choice.  I have Jack, The Hanged, a nurse (Miss Pack) and that is all. I am going to proxy for the rest as long as my opponent will allow it, just using some other random models I have, and in the case of Hans, using the Freikorps Hunter. Without actual crew out for all the models in wave two, I think this will come up more and more especially as I look at "new" masters in the 2nd edition.
   So now how can we improve on this already great master with an avatar?  We get another way to add the tormented characteristic to an enemy.  So in his premanifest we get a 7 versus willpower new attack to give out the condition.  After manifesting, he gets a bit better.  First of all, a + flip on all duels.  Now this is pretty big considering that everything except a damage flip is a duel, so all attack and defense gets that extra card, which makes it easier to get that positive flip on the damage also.  He then makes everyone in a 4 inch bubble insignificant, and so they cannot take interact actions.  Finally he gets a new attack against models that he has attached his cursed upgrades to with a cast of 7 and a sweet 4/5/6 damage spread.  If he happens to kill the model, he get to draw 2 cards on a tome trigger.  Overall a very nice improvement to the model when he changes to the avatar state.  At a cost of three soulstones, I would still call it a deal easy.

   So this has been my least favorite kind of post, Theoryfaux.  This is where I decide things will work a certain way before I have even put a model on the table.  When I get to these kind of posts on the forums, a lot of times I just skip right over them.  So here is what I am thinking.....  It has been a rough month for me as far as gaming goes, and I have not gotten to the game store in about a month....however, I will be headed up Thursday night and I already have a game with this crew planned.  So what I am thinking, is along with my Theoryfaux, I will put up a battle report for my next post see if what I THOUGHT would happen actually worked on that way.  The thinking is that I will either prove my theory and can hold my head up high, or that I suck and I will have to make sure from here on out that I play games with masters before I open my big mouth.  I should have that battle report out on Saturday, so until then I hope you enjoyed reading and I will talk to you again soon!  Thanx!!